


love in bloom

by doc_pickles



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Soulmate AU, jolex fluff, this is all ive been doing in quarantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25495345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doc_pickles/pseuds/doc_pickles
Summary: whenever you’re injured, flowers bloom on your soulmate in the same spot. which can only mean a world of pain for alex and jo.
Relationships: Alex Karev/Jo Wilson Karev
Comments: 9
Kudos: 58





	love in bloom

**Author's Note:**

> hellooooo friends!! if you’ve been following me on tumblr you’ve seen this already, but i’m slowly adding my tumblr works onto AO3! I hope y’all like it :)

The first time Alex notices the flowers, he’s ten. They sting momentarily as they bloom fully on his arm, but the beautiful lines of ink that trace over his skin distract him from the pain. 

They’re peonies and sword lilies, his science teacher tells him the next day. When he asks why they’re covering his arm, her face falls. She lifts her long skirt to show Alex a large black and white rose on her ankle. Her husband had fallen off the roof while hanging Christmas lights one year and shattered his ankle.

Alex still doesn’t quite understand, but he stares at the flowers for the weeks they stay on his body, the color eventually fading away. The lines stay for a few months, but they too fade away and Alex is left hoping no one was injured for the sight he adored. 

+

Jo is 14 when her back is filled with anemones and petunias . She can feel the stinging sensations more in some places than others, the various shades of the flowers brighter in the more painful spots. Her whole back is covered and she wonders what the hell is happening to her. 

“Soulmates,” Ashley Petersen explains when she sees Jo’s back during PE. “If your soulmate is injured, flowers will bloom on your skin. I’d love to know what your soulmate is up to.”

Jo examines the flowers again in the locker room, her mind racing trying to figure out how exactly this mysterious soul mate of hers injured their whole entire back. 

+

Alex’s life as an intern is already challenging enough without people staring at him day in and out. He’s starting to get concerned too, because the flowers that are appearing now are always withered and dying, but they won’t stop coming. 

Today he has a nasty green and blue arrangement around his left eye which he can only assume means his soul mate has an orbital fracture. His fingers run absent mindedly over the black and white flowers that still linger on his stomach, laying over his ribs in a crooked pattern. 

He’s used to these sights now, the flowers have shown up regularly since he was 14 and have never really stopped. Every night before he slips into bed, Alex says a quiet prayer for the person he’s eternally connected to.

The peonies and sword lilies have begun to wilt, shriveling up over the past year. He hasn’t seen a fully bloomed one in almost a year and a half. Alex has learned that peonies stand for romance and compassion, while the sword lilies stand for strength. The flowers are a comfort somedays though, the new ones assuring him that whoever he’s supposed to end up with is still alive, still fighting. 

+

Jo is in her night lab when the pain starts. A sharp, radiating pain from below her right breast. She thinks she can power through it, after all she’s an expert on pain, but it begins to grow and her lab partner is looking concerned. 

“Oh god damn it,” Jo is screaming a minute later, her hand covering his skin as she crumbles to the floor in pain. “Jesus Christ that fucking hurts!”

The pain begins to take over all of her senses and the next thing Jo remembers in waking up in a hospital bed. Disoriented and groggy, Jo still has enough sense to peel her gown down to look at her skin.

The bright purple sword lilies have never shown up before, but their message of strength and resilience echo through Jo’s head for several weeks. They are not the petunias that symbolize anger or the anemones that mean protection, the ones that comforted her in her darkest moments. 

While the color fades, the sharp lines of the flower never leave and Jo is left wondering what exactly her soulmate has been through to inflict this much permanent pain. 

+

Alex has learned over the years that his soul mate is clumsy. He’s had more sword lilies on his fingers than he can count and the peony on his hip is almost always there. 

These injuries don’t hurt anymore, though he almost wishes they did. The worst was the large arrangement over his ribs that knocked the wind out of him. Alex grimaces sometimes at the thought of what his gunshot wound must’ve felt like for his other half. He’s treated soul mates of GSW victims and it’s never pretty. 

The one he gets today though, is neither a peony or a sword lily. Alex studies the flower on the left side of his stomach in awe, finally asking a nurse if she knew what it was. 

“That’s a hydrangea,” the older woman smiled at Alex sweetly. “They stand for perseverance. You must have yourself a strong girl.”

Alex never sees the sword lilies again, only peonies and hydrangeas. He thinks, rather he hopes, that his soulmate has moved past the trials that had left so many permanent marks on his own body. 

+

She’s in her final med school exam when Jo’s left hand begins to sting. She shakes it out as she continues to write, trying to ignore the pinpricks snaking up her wrist. 

In a free moment, Jo looks down to see that the flower that’s appeared is a new one. There are no anemones or petunias and the lone sword lily she bares on her right side doesn’t appear either. 

A small cluster of forget me nots draws a clean line across the palm of her hand. Jo clenches her hand tightly, holding on to the message of hope her soulmate has unknowingly sent her. 

+

It’s fall now, which means a new round of interns stumbling their way through the hospital. They’ve only been here for three weeks and Alex is sick of their shit. 

“Code White in the trauma bay, Code White in the trauma bay.”

Alex knows the code means a combative patient, which is never a good sign in this hospital. However, a situation like that always creates an air of drama that entertains the doctors to no end. Alex moves to walk down the hall and see what’s happening when pain splits through his left arm. 

“Holy shit!”

He can’t help his reaction, mainly because Alex feels like his arm is about to fall off. He grabs onto a gurney and looks down at his arm, which sports a fully bloomed peony now. Whatever his soul mate got into today hurt like hell. 

“Hey Karev,” Cristina is standing next to him now, eyes alight as if her parents just bought her a new puppy. “Did you hear? An intern just got stabbed in the arm, what a pathetic loser. This might be our worst batch yet.”

“Woah wait,” Alex looks up, brows furrowing as he stared down Cristina. His own arm throbbed in a dull pain, almost as if a reminder to ask for more information. “Which arm? And which intern?”

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Cristina shrugged, sitting herself on the gurney next to Alex. “Question is, why do you care?” 

Alex pushed himself off the gurney, feet traveling towards the ER as fast as he could. His arm still throbbed, the peony sprouting more blooms as he made his way down the halls. Alex heard a commotion and knows he’s heading the right way, moving towards Owen’s loud and demanding voice as he walked further into the ER. 

“Someone page plastics, she’s gonna need this sewn up,” Owen’s request sends one of the interns running out of a room. Her curly black hair is familiar to Alex, his mind putting a name to the face. 

“Edwards!”

The intern stops and turns to Alex, who’s hand is holding his left arm tightly. Her eyes flick from Alex’s arm to his face, a grin of realization appearing on her face. 

“She’s in there, she’ll be fine,” Stephanie started to walk away, Alex’s eyes still following her. “It’s Wilson, by the way.”

Alex walks, his feet moving without his direction, towards the room Edwards just left. He can see Owen, see April, but he can’t bring himself to go further. 

“Karev? I paged plastic not peds,” Owen stared at Alex for a moment, before looking to his arm that was clutched to his chest. “Let me see.”

Alex holds his hand out for the older man, Owen’s eyes scanning the newly inked skin. A smirk painted on Owen’s face as he gestured April out of the room, leaving Alex staring at Jo. 

She really was beautiful, Alex had never taken her in fully but god was she gorgeous. Even with her bloodied arm and unruly brunette hair, Jo Wilson was gorgeous. 

“What’re you doing here?”

“You broke your arm when I was ten,” the words come out as if Alex had practiced them for years. (Which he might have, but that’s besides the point) “When I was 22, you cut your left leg pretty badly. And when I was an intern here, you had a shitty boyfriend. And you’re clumsy as hell, how does someone get that many paper cuts?”

Jo blinked once, twice, then moved her right arm to carefully pull up her scrub top. There in black ink, was a long sword lily, just like the ones Alex was so used to seeing appear on his own skin. He knew the location far too well, his own skin scarred in the same spot. 

“What the hell happened there,” Jo asked, a small grin lighting up her face as she stared Alex down. “Because that made me pass out for two and half hours.”

“Trust me,” Alex walked forward and sat in the chair next to Jo’s bed. “If I could’ve been knocked out for two and half hours, I would’ve been too.” 


End file.
